Archive for the 'FreeBSD' Category

Freebsd – Backup & restore for disaster recovery

Published on July 3, 2009 in FreeBSD. 0 Comments

Data are all around servers. To name a few, file server, email server, LDAP server, web server, DNS server and these are just a few essential servers that make up part of IT section of your company. ERP, CRM, financial projection system, database server, accounting & payroll system are the example of business application. Imagine, what if “some” of these data are loss. It is also worth mentioning that data is so valuable to the company, that partial loss of it might lead to breaking your business continuity !!!

Most of the company operation are depending on these data in the server to make decisions. Data in the servers have never been so important.

Server data disaster recovery planing is a vital process in system administration. It directly shows how much the system administrators understand the importance their role in the business. Reason for data loss can be classified into 2 main categories, natural disaster and man made disaster. Natural disaster that causes data loss includes flood, earthquake, fire hazard and etc. Man made disaster (aka PBKC which denodes Problem Between Keyboard and Chair) examples, hacking activities, accidental data deletion or over written and server maintenance e.g. patching, upgrades, developments, moving to a bigger size of hard disk & etc.

Disaster recovery involves planning, backup & restore. Planning will need identify which are the crucial data to backup and how frequent should it be backup. The next consideration will be what media should the data be save to. Generally, external hard disk (e.g USB) or network based storage (e.g. file server, ssh server, NAS, SAN) are the cheapest & fastest way to store the data. But if the data is to archive, it should go into media e.g. tape, CD, DVD and other optical media. Lastly, all planning and backup of the data should always test against restoration, or else why even plan to save it.

This post will concentrate on how to prepare for Server disaster recovery on a FreeBSD server.

DataPipe most reliable web hoster - June 2009

Published on July 3, 2009 in FreeBSD. 0 Comments

DataPipe had the most reliable hosting company site in June 2009. The company’s site responded without fail to every request made by Netcraft’s performance collectors throughout the month.

This is DataPipe’s second appearance at the top so far this year

FreeBSD is taking the top 2 places

Firefox 3.5 Released

Published on July 3, 2009 in FreeBSD. 0 Comments

Firefox 3.5 is now available in the FreeBSD ports (/usr/ports/www/firefox35/).

There are some issues with HTML5 and video

On Windows I still prefer Google Chrome as it’s faster and uses less resources. Just waiting for the extenstions to come.

BSDTalk 175 - Michael Dexter and BSDFund

Published on June 30, 2009 in BSD Talk. 1 Comment

Will Backman has uploaded BSDTalk 175 , a 23 minute interview with Michael Dexter of BSD Fund.

This is an interview with Michael Dexter about BSD Fund. They talk about the release of the BSD Fund Visa Credit Card, PCC, and various other projects.

Download as OGG | MP3

Michel Dexter has now announced the Beastie Visa Card. Every time the BSD Fund Visa is used, a small donation is made to BSD Fund to support its programs. Note, that currently the card is only available to US residents.

Bordeaux 1.8 for FreeBSD Released

Published on June 30, 2009 in Wine / Bordeaux. 0 Comments

bordeaux group logoBordeaux 1.8 has had many changes on the back end, our build process has been totally rewritten, packaging has been totally rewritten. This release adds Microsoft Office 97, Adobe Photoshop 6 & 7 and Image Ready 3.0 and 7.0 support. The winetricks script has been synced to the latest official release, Steam should now install and run once again, There has also been many small bug fixes and tweaks.

This complete rewrite gives Bordeaux a much more clean and portable codebase, making new improvements much easier to provide. We already have some exciting things in the works for the next release.

Bordeaux 1.8 has been tested against Wine 1.1.22, 1.1.23 and 1.1.24 thus far.

The cost of Bordeaux 1.8 is $20.00. Anyone who has purchased Bordeaux in the past six months is entitled to a free upgrade. Bordeaux comes with six months of upgrades and support and of course a 30-day money back guarantee.

Supported Applications/Games:

  • Microsoft Office 2007
  • Microsoft Office 2003
  • Microsoft Office 2000
  • Microsoft Office 97
  • Microsoft Office Visio 2003
  • Microsoft Office Project 2003
  • Adobe Photoshop 6
  • Adobe Image Ready 3
  • Adobe Photoshop 7
  • Adobe Image Ready 7
  • Adobe Photoshop CS
  • Adobe Photoshop CS2
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer 6
  • Steam and Steam based Games

Version 1.8 New Features:

  • Fixed Steam install
  • Removed pygtk, pango requirement
  • Added Microsoft Office 97 support
  • Added Adobe Photoshop 6 support
  • Added Adobe Photoshop 7 support
  • Added Adobe Image Ready 3 support
  • Added Adobe Image Ready 7 support
  • Updated Winetricks scripts

Source: bordeauxgroup.com

iXsystems releases iX-Apollo Extreme Series Workstation

Published on June 24, 2009 in PC-BSD and iXsystems. 2 Comments

iXsystems has unveiled the iX-Apollo Extreme Series, the first fully qualified PC-BSD workstation. The iX-Apollo Extreme Series ships with PC-BSD 7.x Pre-Installed and Pre-Configured. PC-BSD is a complete desktop operating system with a robust feature set including KDE 4.2.2. PC-BSD is inherently virus-resistant thereby offering stability, security and at the same time provides a comfortable user experience.

The iX-Apollo Extreme Series features the latest Intel Core i7 technology with support for up to eight logical cores. It utilizes up to 16GB of DDR3 memory, GigE LAN, 3D capable NVIDIA graphics. Additionally the iX-Apollo Extreme Series is powered by an ultra quiet 500 Watt power supply unit, which is equipped with universal input and active PFC. The power supply is also 80PLUS certified, making it efficient, eco-friendly, and less expensive to operate.

“The workstation gets more than 15,000 frames per second with effects turned off, and sees around 300 fps in Half-Life 2 with video settings maxed out. This Intel® Core™ i7 configuration is the best desktop experience I’ve had so far.  I downloaded Vavle’s Steam client and played Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike Source, and Left 4 Dead using PC-BSD.  I bought Half-Life 2 in 2004, but the Windows PC I had at the time could barely handle it. The load times alone made the game unplayable. Thanks to PC-BSD and some really nice hardware, I was finally able to enjoy the game the way it was intended,”

says James T. Nixon III, Webmaster, iXsystems.

“Aside from the amazing gaming performance, the workstation deploys desktop effects beautifully.  It sits quietly next to my television serving as a PC-BSD ‘Media Center’, making couch-computing the ‘only’ way to go!  Whether you’re writing a white paper in OpenOffice, watching movies with VLC, or enjoying the HD Flash videos on Hulu.com, PC-BSD continues to prove that anything is possible with the right hardware,”

says Ryan Hall, PC-BSD/iX-Apollo User.

Announcement: Two new projects funded by the FreeBSD Foundation

Published on June 19, 2009 in FreeBSD Foundation. 0 Comments

The FreeBSD Foundation has announced they have accepted two project proposals!

AVR32 - 32-bit MIPS Architecture

Arnar Mar Sig has been awarded a grant to develop AVR32 support for FreeBSD. AVR32 is a 32-bit MIPS architecture targeted for low power high throughput embedded applications. The target platform is the NGW100 reference design board from Atmel.

“This work will advance the MIPS support in FreeBSD and our capabilities in building embedded applications,”

said Sam Leffler, The FreeBSD Foundation, Director.

“I’m excited to be able to work on bringing FreeBSD to another architecture and pushing it farther into the embedded market,”

said Arnar Mar Sig, FreeBSD developer.

The project will be completed by August 2009.

FreeBSD Problem Reporting System

Mark Linimon has been awarded a grant to prototype a new problem reporting system for the FreeBSD project.  This project will allow Mark to define the features, look-and-feel, and architecture of a future replacement of the project’s current GNATs based system.  Once the prototype is complete, it will be used to garner input from the FreeBSD community before a production system is implemented.

Mark holds two positions within FreeBSD: one on the Ports Management team (portmgr) and one on the Problem Report Database administration team (bugmeister). He has also written the Ports Monitoring System to correlate data from the package building cluster, the Problem Report Database, the source control repository check-ins, and other sources.

“One of the most frequently requested improvements from the FreeBSD developer community is an improved bug tracking system,”

said Mark Linimon. He also added,

“The design goals of this prototype are to incorporate such features as markedly improved workflow, better categorization, customizable email notifications, and redesigned web pages to make searching and browsing easier. Once the prototype is completed,” Mark added, “it will be circulated amongst the developer community for feedback. I am happy to have the Foundation’s support to work on this project.”

“Problem reporting software is a critical tool for getting feedback from the FreeBSD user community, recording information about defects and missing features in the system, and making our volunteer developers productive,”

said Justin Gibbs, Founder of the FreeBSD Foundation.

“Mark has used manpower and sheer will to overcome the deficiencies in the current problem reporting system, and to make it work for the project.  But our GNATs isn’t fully utilized because of missing features and a clumsy user interface. We’re very excited to help address these problems in a core piece of the FreeBSD project’s infrastructure.”

This project will be completed by the end of June.

I’m sure everybody will join me to congratulate Mark and Arnar on their successful applications. We’re looking forward to AVR32 support for FreeBSD and a new FreeBSD bug reporting system.

Creating a Network Attached Storage VMware using FreeNAS

Published on June 15, 2009 in FreeBSD and FreeNAS. 0 Comments

This Tutorial will give you a run down on how to create a VMware using FreeNAS. The tutorial comes with screenshots and covers installation of FreeNAS, setting up an iSCSI target and connecting to it from Windows.

Setup FreeBSD Jail with ezjail

Published on June 15, 2009 in FreeBSD. 0 Comments Tags: .

PC-BSD has the Warden GUI to install and maintain jails. Setting these up can also, and I’m sure many would prefer this way, be set up from the console.  Cyberciti.biz has published a useful and extensive guide:

How do I setup operating system-level virtualization that allows me to partition my FreeBSD-based server system into several independent mini-systems called jails.? I’d like to set one jail for mail and another for web server via 2 public IP address.

Each jail under FreeBSD virtual environment runs on the host machine with its own files, processes, user and superuser accounts. From within a jailed process, the environment is almost indistinguishable from a real system. The easiest way to set, create and modify jails is using a framework called ezjail.

Setup FreeBSD Jail with ezjail

Install FreeBSD 8.0 from USB memory stick

Published on June 15, 2009 in FreeBSD. 0 Comments Tags: .

Martin Wilke has a useful step-by-setp guide (via bsdgroup.de) to install FreeBSD 8.0 (stable version yet to be released) from a USB pendrive:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da0 bs=1k count=1
bsdlabel -Bw da0 auto
newfs -L FreeBSD /dev/da0a
mdconfig -a -t vnode -f 8.0-HEAD-20090609-JPSNAP-i386-dvd1 -u 0 && mount -r -t cd9660 /dev/md0 /mnt/iso
mount /dev/da0a /mnt/USB-Stick
copy all files from your mounted cd in to your USB-Stick, after that you need to create a fstab for your USB-Stick
vi /mnt/USB-Stick/etc/fstab and put following in:
/dev/ufs/FreeBSD / ufs ro 0 0